In the United States people are talking about the American Mafia (Mob). But frequently the criminalists use the term Italian-American mafia to refer to organized crime on U.S. soil. But it is not correct, because not only Italian-Americans are involved in complex organized crime activities, but also Anglo-Saxons, Irish, Jews, Puerto Ricans (Hispanics in general), Jamaicans, etc..
More interesting would be to call it a crime syndicate or organization, but these terms are adapted to non-American. Moreover, in American history, Italian immigrants (among them there were many members of the Sicilian Mafia), formed Cosa Nostra (Our Thing). They founded the base of what is today the North American organized crime. Italian-American Mafia is different from other branches originating from outside the U.S. but strongly implanted here (Chinese triads, Japanese yacuza, Russian Mafia, Jamaican yard, etc..).
The Origins of the Mafia in the U.S.
The existence of organized gangs is more or less present in the U.S. since the early XIX century. They had strong essential ties to immigration. The identity of a gang is also territorial (one hood) and ethnic. Newer immigrants were protected and often exploited by their compatriots already long established in America. Americans didn't see kindly the newcomers. They considered them poor, more as some "barbarians". These really poor people, who fled to the U.S. because of the misery and poverty in their country, living in the most despicable districts were easily felling under the blows of gangs, who used their women and children for the dirty jobs. Since they were children, they were thought the lessons of the street, which then they controlled with authority.
The economic crisis and the rapid demographics in the XIXth century in the U.S. offered many opportunities for traffic. The huge teritory and high liberties also offered a great freedom of maneuver, much bigger then in Europe. Thus, we believe that the emergence of organized crime in the U.S. is essentially linked to the formation of so-called American dream.
At the beginning of the XX century, the major gangs were operating in the major cities such as Chicago, New Orleans, and especially New York. They were especially composed of immigrants or sons of Italian immigrants, Irish or Hebrew Ashkenazi (central or eastern Europe). According to criminology, a gang is a smaller organization of a mafia, with lower activities, with less robust links between its members and with a perenial existence due mostly to the personality of the leader.
New Orleans, the place of Sicilian Mafia
The wave of Italian immigrants began in the mid XIX century. It succeded the wave of the Anglo-Saxons immigrants, Irish and Scandinavian. Sicilians were particularly numerous in Louisiana, a region traditionally reluctant to central institutions (due to french colonization), a region of corruption and marshy lands inhabited by the rich Cajuns and full of hideouts.
Among these Sicilians, some were already affiliated with Cosa Nostra and reinstated on American soil the same type of links that they had in Sicily. Despised by Franco-British natives that were well chiseled into society, they began to organize themselves into gangs and were allowed (although it is difficult to prove) to develop in the New-Orleans, where the Sicilian Mafia was implanted for the first time in the U.S., before it spreaded in all major cities at the end of the century.
The local media, since 1869, reports on sicilian gangs. Between 1870 and 1890, the police in New Orleans attributed over a hundred murders to the Sicilian Mafia. At the end of the century the mafia dominates the port activities (robbing ships in transit) and the trade in fruits and vegetables, under the Matranga brothers.
Italian anti-xenophobic resentment had increased with the development of Sicilian organized crime. In 1891, there has been one of the blodiest lynching in the U.S. history. Eleven Italians were murdered by the mad crowd, following the unsolved murder of a police chief name David Hennessey. But the Italian community was the first victim of the Sicilian Mafia. Some of its members were practicing extortion against their compatriots through an operation known as Mano Nera, which recalls the black hand drawn on the threat letters sent to targets. If the amount claimed was not left on the doorstep of the victim, the target was likely to be murdered shortly.
In 1820, an area south of Manhattan called the Five Points (as there are five intersecting streets), has become the most notorious place in New York, with its concentration of gangs and suspicious houses. During the XIX century, hoods were crowded with the children of the immigrants who layed the law on the streets. Gangs like Plug Uglies, Roach Guards, Dead Rabbits and Whyos (the last two being mostly Irish) operated here.
Since 1870, the Hebrew and Jewish immigrants mass arrived in New York and were installed in the southern Manhattan, especially in the Mulberry Street, which later became the heart of the Italian neighborhood called Little Italy in the Lower East Side. The gang physiognomy changed accordingly, the immigrants forming their own gangs to resist to those who were already there. In parallel, the Sicilian Mafia developed by the year 1890, through the arrival of godfather Antonio Morello. He associated with a Sicilian immigrant in 1898, Ignazio Saietta, called Lupo (Wolf) for its crudity in the practice of extorsion of fellow italians. He allegedly tortured to death (often by burning) over 60 people. The Morello crime family became the dominant group in 1910.
Meanwhile, in 1909, on the Broadway, Monk Eastman's gang (a massive scarred Jew born Edward Osterman in 1873 in Brooklyn) opose a gang composed mostly of Italians known as the Five Points Gang, created by Paul Kelly (a former boxer with the real name Paolo Antonio Vaccarelli born in 1875 in Sicily). Each gang count on the contribution of at least a thousand gangsters who had their share of games, prostitution, pick-pocketing, robberies and murders. They were in business with politicians from Tamany Hall Democratic Party organization in New York (at the helms of the city in 1850) helping them to fix elections or impose a decision.
In return politicians abused of their relations in the court environment, in order to reduce the effects of the arrests. Fighting between the Monk Eastman Gang's and the Five Points Gang culminated in 1903 with a real battle that took place in the street, which police could not control. The reign of these gangs began to fade in the year 1910, mainly as a result of multiple arrests, mainly that of Monk Eastman.
The Five Point Gang made the transition from the XIX century gangs and contemporary criminal organizations born in the great prohibition. From the new gangs we can take notice in particular of the mobsters heads such as Johnny Torrio, Al Capone and Lucky Luciano. Eastman was killed in 1920 after he returned from the first world war. He guided the career of Arnold Rothstein, a great professional player, friend of politicians and underworld financier.
A corrupt captain named Charles Becker tried in early 1910 to use mafia methods to reign over the crime in New York. His actions were revealed when a crime he ordered was exposed. He was killed in the electric chair in 1915.
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